Surf Safely 3: We are A Community. Helping Everyone Surf Safely.

Welcome to Surf Safely Issue 3, the final issue in our collection of recommendations to stay safe on the web. Personally, this one is my favorite.

We talked about real time link scanning and robot crawling and their benefits as well as flaws. What about community based?

WOT: The Web of Trust
Price: Free

Download Links:
Internet Explorer 6.0+ (Windows)
Mozilla Firefox 1.5+ and other Mozilla browsers (all platforms)
Mozilla Add-ons Site
Bookmarklet for other browsers (not limited to Opera and Safari)

Style: Community Based Rating System

Overview:
WOT, one of the most popular Firefox add-ons, adds tiny color coded icons next to search results to tell you which sites are safe in addition to a toolbar button. There are 5 different colors available: Red, Orange, Yellow, Light Green, Green. The ratings are generated based on user contributions and ratings. This causes a lot of criticism of WOT. However, think again.

Unlike other systems, WOT not only rates Safety, but 4 categories: Overall Trustworthiness, Vendor Reliability, Privacy, and Child Safety.

What makes community based ratings more efficient?
Nobody and nothing is perfect. Just like SiteAdvisor and SafeWeb, its not perfect. Obviously, there may be some incorrect ratings here or there. So if you can't be sure, why use something that everyone can change and anyone can mess up the ratings. The answer is ... thats not true. The system is far more complicated than just: Unrated site, random user rates it down, the site becomes red. That is not how it works.

WOT users have something called an activity score. As you rate and comment on sites, your score goes up and as your score goes up, the less score you receive per rating and comment. Anyway, as people agree with your comments, your user personal trust increases. You cannot view your user trust as it is all automated. Higher score users typically have a higher trust than lower score since most higher score users have been users for a while. If you have a high reputation, it is not likely you will mess up ratings, so your ratings can have a large impact on the site's overall rating. On the other hand, if you have a low score, reputation, and is a new user, your ratings won't contribute much to the rating.

There are many manipulation prevention methods, which most people that criticize WOT about community ratings don't realize.

Now why is community based efficient? Imagine the following situation (which is actaully a true situation): A site starts off safe. Both WOT and robot crawlers rate the site Green for safe. A few days or weeks later, the server is hacked and it starts redirecting to sites hosting malicious software instead. WOT users who find out re-rates the site, tells others to check the site, and re-rate it to, therefore changing the rating. How long other systems take to change the rating is anyone's guess.


Performance:
As I mentioned in earlier issues, I use 3 site advisors: WOT, Norton SafeWeb, and AVG Linkscanner. WOT is the fastest loading of them all. Also, it is the only one that also functions on a dynamic version of Google, which has an extra piece of URL and coding. It loads with the page and doesn't slow it down at all.

Features:
4 Rating Categories so you can even use it as parental controls. By default, a warning screen shows upon visiting any dangerous RED and DARK RED site. You can easily change it to warn up to Yellow. In addition, you don't just have to warn, you can BLOCK it too. The blocking feature prevents browser exploits by loading the ratings BEFORE the page loads and blocking access before the page even gets a chance to load. This causes a slight sub-second browsing delay for obvious reasons. So you decide: Extra Security at the cost of slight page loading time or regular page load time but no malicious page blocking?

Warning Screen:


Blocked Screen (notice the URL):


The WOT Design team also created a Colorblind version.


Disagree with a rating and don't want to see the warnings? Rate the site yourself and voila! You're done. The warnings will stop appearing for you. If you want to request to change the site's rating completely, contact the WOT Support Team by clicking here. Their email response time is really snappy aka very fast (on weekdays).

How accurate compared to others?
In order to properly compare, you need to look at the overall trend, not just one particular site. In reality, WOT has the least inaccurate ratings overall and has the most frequently updated ratings as well as the most sites rated. New rogue sites are rated within one day of their appearance which is when many trusted sources such as Sunbelt Blog posts information about them. Many users know of these trusted sources, and then rate all the fraud sites.

As with previous issues in this series, we will test the rating on two known sites serving malicious software and files.

screensavers.com: RED

warez.com: ORANGE

The number of people icons on this mouse over popup indicates the confidence of the rating. The more people rate a site a certain color, the more confident the rating is.

Additional Notes:
A slightly modified URL of Google Searches cause all other site advisor add-ons to not function. However, people have reported this and the WOT Developers at Against Intuition have allowed this to work. So no matter which version you use, WOT will still protect you even if others don't!

Ratings on this blog have been provided by WOT. Mousing over any link gives you a button that when clicked will open the site's scorecard for the sub-domain (or domain). All sub-domains have their own sub-domain. All Twitter Profiles also have one too!

Visit our WOT Scorecard here!

Join the community, start spreading your knowledge with the world, and help everyone stay safe on the web!

Permanently Block Dangerous Sites

Hello everyone! It's me - Creastery™ 2009, posting here again.
Today, I am going to teach you how to block sites that you do not want to visit.
Example, advertisements and also sites that have auto pop-ups.
This is available for Windows and Mac operating systems.

For Windows:

Windows XP = C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC
Windows 2K = C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC
Windows 98\ME = C:\WINDOWS

Whichever applicable, open the file "hosts" with any editor. Eg: Notepad.
* Add the following on its own line in the hosts file, using the sites that apply to you:

You will see something like this below:

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the localhost, you can add on like this.

127.0.0.1 localhost facebook.com youtube.com blogger.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remember to leave a space between each website. After you are done, save and quit.

For Mac Operating System,
In Finder, from the Go menu, choose "Go to folder." then type "/etc/".
At the /etc/ folder window, open the "hosts" file in a text editor.
Add the following to the hosts file in its own line, using the site that applies to you:
127.0.0.1 metafilter.com flickr.com facebook.com blogger.com
That is just an example.

After you are done, save and quit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By right, if you use any of those servers above available,
you should get a "Server Not Found" error. This will be effective if you put virus websites, spam sites like www.funbox.com, all these will be blocked.

That's all folks for today! Please comment on tech as we need comments to improve on the tech guide. Don't hesitate to ask any questions. Thanks!
By - WinTechpedia™ 2009 Contributors

Surf Safely 2: Database Created by Web Crawlers

Welcome to Issue 2 of the introduction to safe search site advisors. Stop guessing which search results and sites are safe!

Note: This post is about McAfee SiteAdvisor, however SafeWeb was included even though its not free because they are very similar.

McAfee SiteAdvisor:
A similar program is McAfee SiteAdvisor. Similar to Norton SafeWeb, except this one does not require the security suite.
Internet Explorer (Windows only)
Mozilla Firefox (Windows, Mac, and Linux)*
Price: Free

Download SiteAdvisor for Firefox here.
The download at the SiteAdvisor site is an .exe file, therefore installing for IE and Firefox on Windows.
*There are reports that SiteAdvisor does not function on non-Windows. I have only tested the add-on on Windows. Leave a comment if you have used (or tried) on Mac or Linux/Unix.

Norton SafeWeb:
For Microsoft Windows
Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox
Component in Norton Internet Security 2009 and Norton 360 v3.0.
Price: Varies depending on suite. See Symantec site for details.
***Comes bundled with Norton 360 3.0 and Norton Internet Security 16.5 Patch. No longer as a standalone add-in download (as was for previous NIS 2009 versions/patches)***

Style: Robot Crawler Scanning Database

Both programs function the same way. They put tiny color coded icons next to search results with 3 distinct colors: Red, Yellow, and Green. They load from their own database and clicking the icons loads the scorecard, where you can view various information.

Norton only has ratings for the main domain. SiteAdvisor too, except for .blogspot.com and various other sites.
Both services provide ratings for all .blogspot.com sub-domains although most probably aren't rated at all. Norton also gives ratings for freewebs.com/*.

SafeWeb is integrated with Norton Toolbar, which is part of your security suite so it technically doesn't load with Firefox. SiteAdvisor loads with Firefox as a regular add-on if you install the .xpi and not the .exe.

Once you finish installing SiteAdvisor as the .xpi, it prompts you to install the .exe, just close it.

SiteAdvisor uses a status-bar label (which on Firefox causes the whole statusbar to become higher), while Norton uses a new toolbar. SiteAdvisor comes with a "Secure Search" bar using Yahoo! Search. Similarly, Norton Toolbar (as of NIS v16.5 patch) also has a "Secure Search" bar using Ask Search. The Norton Verified Ask Search removes all dangerous search results. This Ask Search is NOT the same one as regular searches on Ask Search. The SiteAdvisor search bar, doesn't give any benefits because Yahoo! already uses SiteAdvisor security information. I never use either search engine and luckily, you can easily disable the bar on both. Both are not third-party toolbars.
Performance:
Comparing it to WOT and Linkscanner, Norton was slower than both, and SiteAdvisor was the slowest of them all, also slowing down overall browsing and conflicting with search add-ons (placing ratings over others sometimes). Norton Toolbar didn't slow down browsing much. Tested on Firefox 3.0.10.

Active Shield:
The Internet Explorer version of SiteAdvisor gives a tiny alert bubble when visiting a suspicious or malicious site. The same thing is for SafeWeb, however, it warns on both browsers. Norton basically just automatically shows what you would see if you click on the safety icon. Norton, however, gives a full blocked warning screen for valid phishing sites, as that is the purpose of Norton Toolbar. SiteAdvisor gives absolutely no warning on Firefox, just the red statusbar label. When visiting a blacklisted phishing site, SiteAdvisor redirects you away.

Accuracy:
Both retrieve ratings by an automated bot scanning pages to a database. The problem with this is that if a server was infected for a few minutes and that is just when the bot scans it, the site will be hurt. The rating will not likely change for a long time, such as this one. All the bad community ratings didn't actaully say anything. They were being influenced by the Norton rating. See below.

Update: Norton has re-scanned the site and it is back on green.

I am not responsible if you visit these known malicious sites and download malicious files.
Time for the known malicious site test.

screensavers.com:
SiteAdvisor: RED

Norton: GREEN

warez.com
SiteAdvisor: YELLOW

Norton: GREEN

And false positives?

If ANY mailicious software is found on a site, Norton will not give it a green. So far, no green site has any scanned malware. SiteAdvisor still gives green if only a small percentage is mailicious.

As of 4/29/09, Norton rates Softpedia YELLOW for one malicious file. Rating may change as site gets re-scanned.
Norton also tends to flag Google Cache servers as malicious since the safety depends on the cached site itself.

Robot crawlers tend to be slow at rescanning pages and have many obsolete ratings, especially SiteAdvisor. In addition, remember that SiteAdvisor does NOT block or even warn (on Firefox version) about malicious sites. Theres just a red label in the status bar. Norton just popups open the little dialog to warn. However, on blacklisted phishing sites (which is quite uncommon), the label turns black and redirects to a SiteAdvisor warning page rather than loading the site itself.

Although Norton SafeWeb is quite inaccurate right now, its fairly new (public beta in July 2008). So far, I have noticed that Norton re-scans pages a lot (as in A LOT faster) faster than McAfee. I have noticed some inaccurate ratings on Norton update within 2 weeks (such as the spanishdict.com above). SiteAdvisor doesn't seem to be nearly as fast. But remember: SafeWeb is NOT free.

I recommend having all 3 types of advisors for optimal security: Community Based, Web Crawler, and Real Time Scanner. I use WOT, Norton SafeWeb, and Linkscanner. I used to use McAfee SiteAdvisor, however, from personal experience, it slowed down browsing, has a lot of obsolete ratings, and commonly didn't show up on Google searches. I no longer use SiteAdvisor, but its a good alternative to SafeWeb for those who don't use Norton suites. The ratings on this blog have been generated by WOT.

Visit our SiteAdvisor rating details!
Visit our Norton SafeWeb rating details!

That's all folks for today! Please comment on tech as we need comments to improve on the tech guide. Don't hesitate to ask any questions. Thanks!
By - WinTechpedia™ 2009 Contributors

Surf Safely 1: Scan Links in Real Time. Not a Database.

Over my next few posts, I will be introducing a series of safe search advisors. Why have these? They help you know which sites are safe BEFORE you visit them and if you do visit them, most will warn you or even block the site. This is the first in the series.

Linkscanner (from Exploit Prevention Labs, now acquired by AVG) is back as an individual standalone product no longer requiring the AVG Suite.

Like other safe search tools, it puts tiny color coded icons next to search results showing if its safe. However, LinkScanner literally scans the links in real time rather than getting data off a database. This is a great way to protect from drive by downloads and other threats, but how effective is Linkscanner?

For Microsoft Windows only. Supports Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
Download from AVG Site.
Download from CNET Download.com.
The following test was run on Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 on Mozilla Firefox 3.0.9.

Style: Real Time Scanning

Installation:
The installation is straight forward offering you the AVG Security Toolbar. The toolbar has a Yahoo! search bar that cannot be disabled, although the toolbar components can be. The box is checked by default. Remember to uncheck the box if you do not wish to have the toolbar, like me

User Interface:
Yes, it has a GUI. Basically the AVG Security Software one except just for LinkScanner. I found this to be unnecessary to be running in the background all day since Linkscanner isn't an antivirus product; it only runs in the browser.
Performance
Linkscanner's performance is actaully quite well. It barely slows the pages down. It scans each search result one by one, each taking a fraction of a second. The first few come out faster than other site advisors.

Known Malicious Site Test (Search-Shield)
Please do not visit any of the sites listed here unless you know what you're doing. They are known sites distributing malware. We will help but will not be held responsible for what may happen if you visit malicious sites.

screensavers.com: Linkscanner Scanned this as GREEN

warez.com: Linkscanner Scanned this as REDActive Surf-Search
Upon visiting a scanned malicious site, a warning appears preventing you from visiting the page with a small link to click if you really want to go anyway, like the following shown when I entered warez.com into the location bar.
Additional Note: Linkscanner supports Google Search, Live Search, and Yahoo! Search. When I tested it, it didn't work on Yahoo! Search. On both browsers, green ratings shows as a white space and only sites not green have an icon (can't find any yellow or orange), as shown below. Notice only RED ratings are shown here.


Also, I found it nearly impossible to find a site scanned as Yellow or Orange with the majority being scanned as Green.

I recommend having all 3 types of advisors for optimal security: Community Based, Web Crawler, and Real Time Scanner. I use WOT, Norton SafeWeb, and Linkscanner. I used to use McAfee SiteAdvisor, however, from personal experience, it slowed down browsing, has a lot of inaccurate and/or obsolete ratings, and commonly didn't show up on Google searches. The ratings on this blog have been generated by WOT.

I am not affiliated with AVG or Exploit Prevention Labs in any way.
Download AVG Linkscanner here.

That's all folks for today! Please comment on tech as we need comments to improve on the tech guide. Don't hesitate to ask any questions. Thanks!
By - WinTechpedia™ 2009 Contributors.

Save Ink!

Running out of ink in you're printer is annoying, Do you know how to have that happen less often? Use Ecofont!

Supposedly when you print a document using “Ecofont” it will use up to 20% less ink (a little math, that means that for every 10 pieces of paper that you print using it saves 2 and a half pieces of paper over other fonts) which could save you quite a bit if you're printing lots of stuff all the time. This is because of the fonts design which is modeled off of Swiss cheese.



It looks pretty cool and at a distance it doesn't look any different from other fonts if it's size is set small. I would recommend trying this to anyone that has a printer.

You can get it here:
http://www.ecofont.eu/downloads_en.html
and here's their homepage:
http://www.ecofont.eu/

That's all folks for today! Please comment on tech as we need comments to improve on the tech guide. Don't hesitate to ask any questions. Thanks!
By - WinTechpedia™ 2009 Contributors